Main Theme: The promises of God sustain us through all adversity and encourage us to live fully in every moment.

Transcription

1 Choices: Boldness Over Mildness A Sermon on Stewardship for First UMC Olympia October 28, 2018 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge Sacred against God s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31 39, NRSV) Main Theme: The promises of God sustain us through all adversity and encourage us to live fully in every moment. For the month of October, we have been exploring the stewardship theme of Sacred Choices. Choose life over death. Choose community over isolation. And today, we look at choose boldness over mildness. Now, you have already returned pledge cards with your promises of giving in Doing so IS a life-giving choice. Doing so is a community-affirming choice. And I pray today that your lifegiving, community-affirming choice is also a bold choice and a choice that brings you great joy and a sense of purpose. I am grateful for every gift given to this church for the work of ministry in this place every single one. And I am mindful that the church bears a responsibility to use these gifts in like manner to which they have been given: to bring life, to build community, to act with boldness. It is that boldness that I want to reflect upon this morning. If you have lived at all, really lived, then you have experienced heights and depths of spirit, and you know the brightness and fullness of love s light, and you know, too, the darkness of despair s emptiness. It is a rare life indeed that follows a level and straight path. Instead, we traverse valleys and mountains of experiences, and our route wanders and bends, sometimes moving straight ahead and sometimes doubling back, and the way is filled with forks and detours that divert us. In the church, we often engage people during some of their most difficult and uncertain times. We are there at hospital visits, we are there to mourn when a loved one dies, we are there when the bad news comes news of divorce, job loss, family estrangement, accidents, financial difficulties, and so much more. And we are there when people we ve never met come in from

2 the streets of Olympia and say, I don t know where I will sleep tonight or I haven t eaten this week or The voices in my head are telling me something bad. The church is a place where we like to believe we will find someone who cares, who will open their heart and will experience with us not only our own sorrows, but the sorrows of the world. Not to wallow in the sorrows, but to proclaim that with God we overcome the sorrows, we defeat the forces of death and isolation, of fear and hate. The church is a place where compassion is a first step toward wholeness, and confidence in the power of God to change our world for the better gives us our marching orders to make the world right again. The scripture we read today is often read at memorial services, but I want to proclaim today as clearly as I can that these words of Paul are not for dead alone, but for the living. They are words for me. They are words for you. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I consider these words to be a bold statement of who we are and what we believe and how we shall live every day, even unto the day we die. We shall be bold in proclaiming that the promises of God will sustain us through every adversity, in every storm, and because of our confidence in God we will live bold lives of faith, we will live fully and we will live abundantly, because nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Not one thing. Not some thing. Not that thing. Not this thing. Not the thing we know. Not the thing we don t know. Not the thing we fear. Not the illness we contract. Not the lack of a possession we think we should have. Not some deed we have done or some deed left undone that we ought to have done. Nothing. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. (Say it with me, church!) Nothing can separate us from the love of God. To believe this fully and completely is to be bold in our faith, and it is a sacred choice we make to be bold. I hope and pray that this church helps you to live bold lives of faith, and that in living those bold lives you help this congregation to be a bold church, and you give your leaders and pastors the kind of support and encouragement that lets us truly be bold. Now, I want to be clear about what I mean by bold. One might say, It is a bold thing to try to cross a busy freeway! But I would say, That s not bold, that s stupid. Sometimes people who demonstrate bravado, who are overbearing and excessive, are described as being bold. They certainly might get on the news that way. They

3 might even get elected to a political office. But blustering, and posturing, making lots of noise, and belittling others in order to rise above the crowd, that s not boldness. It certainly isn t the Biblical definition of boldness. The Biblical view of boldness is seen in Jesus, and in the disciples of Jesus who built the church, and in the prophets who spoke at great peril on behalf of God, and the reformers who risked their lives putting God first, above all else. Biblical boldness is made up of clarity of purpose, courage of convictions, creativity in concert with God, an unyielding confidence in the presence of the sacred, and a profound God-like love for all of God s children. Boldness is a passion for God and the ways of God. As people of faith we should, without embarrassment, without hesitation, and with great joy, proclaim that the boldness of the Christian faith is the message itself. The gospels are filled with radical teachings that mild-mannered Christians are always trying to sugar-coat or downplay in order to not offend anyone, resulting in a mild faith, a don t rock the boat faith, a faith of the status quo, a blindered faith that fails to see the periphery of pain and poverty all around us. No, a bold faith refuses to soft-peddle Jesus for the world. We don t need to make the message mild. We just need to let Jesus say what Jesus says, because bold doesn t get any bolder than Jesus. (after Paul Nixon, I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church, p.75) Love your enemy Jesus. Turn the other cheek Jesus. Lay down your life for a friend Jesus. Pray without ceasing Jesus. Give it all to God Jesus. Drop your nets and follow me Jesus. Love one another as I have loved you Jesus. Bold doesn t get any bolder than Jesus. I believe that the church first grew and still exists today because the first disciples, filled with God-Spirit, proclaimed with boldness the Jesus way in a world that needed to be awakened to the presence of God. And I believe that our world desperately needs to be awakened again. I trust that the way to do that is to let Jesus be Jesus, and to boldly proclaim with our very lives Jesus in the world. How do we do that? First, boldness begins with a dream, a dream of something beautiful, a dream of something hopeful, a dream of something big. Don t settle for little dreams. Dare to dream big. The Bible is full of bold personalities who dared to dream God s big dreams. Think of Abraham and Sarah, for example, who are busy childlessly living out their twilight years. Abraham s in his nineties when he has a vision from God. Tony Campolo tells the story this way: I can just see this old man waking up one morning, nudging his wife, and with a shaky voice saying, Sarah? Sarah? The old lady responds in a groggy voice, What do you want, Abe? I just had a vision, says Abraham. What kind of vision?, asks Sarah. I had a vision of a new world! A new humanity! A new people! Sarah, you and I are going to create a whole new epoch in human history! How does this new humanity start?, asks Sarah.

4 I m so glad you asked!, replies Abraham! Now imagine the next scene: It s ninety-four year old Abraham, probably limping along with his walker helping hold him up, alongside his ninety-two year old PREGNANT wife. God gives God s people big, audacious, earth-changing, history-altering dreams. The sacred presence in the universe that I call God always calls us to dream a big dream. It is bold to dream such dreams, and bolder still to act on those dreams. Second, boldness is found when we understand our why to be much more than our own selfinterest. What s your why? Why do you do what you do? Why do you live the way you live? Why do you read what you read? Give what you give? It is bold in world where we are swept along by forces often beyond our control to ask ourselves the question, Why do I do what I do? What is you why? Boldness comes when we remember that our why is always about more than our own self, and always about God. There s an old story from the middle ages about a nobleman who wanted to understand how laborers felt about their work, so he went out to a building site in France where a large building was slowly rising from its foundations. He approached one worker and asked, What are you doing? Are you blind? the worker snapped back. I m cutting these impossible boulders with my tools and putting them together the way the boss tells me. I m sweating under this blazing sun. It s back-breaking work, and it s boring me to death. The nobleman went to a second worker and asked, What are you doing? The second man replied, I m shaping these stones into usable blocks, which are then assembled according to an architect s plans. It s hard work and it gets repetitive, but it is honest labor, labor that supports me and my wife and children. It s a job. Encouraged, the nobleman approached a third worker, and asked, What are you doing? Can t you see? replied the man as he lifted his arm to the sky. I am building a cathedral that will glorify God for centuries to come. It is a bold act to see God in the why of your life. We are bold, and we do bold things, when we remember who we are and whose we are! Third, bold living is focused on the future, not the present or past. You know, I have been a pastor for over three decades and in those 35 years of church work I have learned a lot, and I am proud of what I have learned. But I recently stumbled across a phrase in my reading that has been haunting me. Learn to unlearn, because the world is not the same today as it was yesterday. That thought leads me to question if sometimes my own experiences form a barrier to becoming all God is calling me to be? My mother always warmed up her coffee in a sauce pan on the stove. She did that even after dad bought her a microwave. She couldn t unlearn the habit.

5 When I was the pastor at Prescott United Methodist Church in 1995, I created the church s first web page. It was something of a novelty in those days to have a web page. The local paper did an article about it with a picture of me posing at my desk in front of my CGA monitor. The article quoted me saying something like, The church needs to keep up with the times and use this new tool of the internet to tell our old story Blah, blah, blah. I hand coded that first single page, which later grew to a whopping 6 pages, including a page for the UMW, using a simple word processor (Notepad) and raw html. Later, I used a program called Homesite to write the code, then for a while I used Microsoft FrontPage, then Dreamweaver, then WordPress and a whole bunch of add-ins, and just recently, Angelina introduced me to an online app called Wix that will make your website for you. Now, don t worry if you didn t recognize any of those programs and none of that made sense to you. The point is that the way to make a church web page has evolved at a breakneck pace over the past 25 years, and if I had not learned to unlearn the way I first started making a church web page, well it would be like driving a Model T everywhere you go. Novel, but not very practical or efficient. It is bold to learn new things, and new ways to do old things. Think of the boldness of Saint Paul saying to the Jerusalem Council, Jesus isn t just for you! Let s welcome the Gentiles. How many on the council grimaced and said, But we like things just the way they are. Perhaps that was when the seven last words of the church were first uttered: We ve never done it that way before! The bold church is a church that is looking forward, not backward. It is filled with bold people who are reaching outward, not looking inward. And sometimes such boldness requires risk and we are asked to step outside of our comfort zone and consider new ideas, new practices, new ways of thinking about God, new ways of loving God s people. The church of the status quo demands that we play it safe by never risking, never challenging, never changing. That mild church will slowly die a mild death. I would rather pastor a bold church, and I pray that you would rather BE a bold church, that seeks not to play it safe in the world but to make the world safe. I want to make it safe for you to try new things, reach new people, dream new dreams, celebrate new truths. I want to make the church a safe place for people to ask hard questions and love with Christ s love those the world often fails to love. I want to make it safe to challenge corrupt systems that work against the common good. One writer contrasts boldness with cowardice, fearfulness, cynicism, negativity, discouragement, and pessimism. He notes that these negative traits are infectious, spreading their malaise with abandon. I think he s right, but I also think that boldness is an antidote that is also infectious. I believe the church at its best is bold, that Christians at their best are bold. Stewardship season is for me a time of reflection a sort of grading season when we look at numbers and think about the programs we support, and the lives we touch, and the work we share. The bottom line for me is this simple question: Is there a difference in the community because the church exists? Let me be bold and offer my answer. Yes, there is a difference in this community because this church exists. I am proud of you, you who are the church, proud of the ministries we share, the

6 things we stand for, the hopes we hold in common. I believe that your life is better for this thing we do together here. And I believe the lives of many others are better, too, beyond these walls, because we are here, doing the work of God in this place, not passively, but actively boldly, if you will. We dare to proclaim the Gospel in the midst of a culture that does not consider itself religious, and yet filled with people who long for meaning and purpose. The church of our parent s generation is no more. The world has changed, but Jesus is still here if we remember where to look for him. Sometimes I think that in this rapidly changing world the church is in a perpetual state of confusion and high anxiety. Perhaps it has always been that way. Remember the story of the disciples in Acts 1, watching Jesus ascend into heaven, wondering what do we do now? Some of them said, Let s sit here and pray until the Kingdom comes. But others said, Don t you remember? Jesus said, the kingdom is already here! And they boldly went out in the world to be the kingdom. They knew that Jesus' Kingdom had already come. It was breaking into the world all around them, only this kingdom didn t look like the world expected it to look. And that s still true. The kingdom is here and it is still often unrecognized. It's subversive and underground and controversial and risky, because it stands firmly against other kingdoms, by serving all who are hurting, and sharing Christ with all in need. The kingdom becomes more visible each time we act with boldness, repairing the brokenness of the world, proclaiming peace in the midst of conflict, and reminding ourselves and others again and again that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is a sacred choice. Choose boldness! Amen.